First Case of Systemic Coronavirus Infection in a Domestic Ferret (Mustela putorius furo) in Peru.

A domestic ferret from Lima, Peru, died after ten days of non-specific clinical signs. Based on pathology, immunohistochemistry and molecular analysis, ferret systemic coronavirus (FRSCV)-associated disease was diagnosed for the first time in South America. This report highlights the potential spread of pathogens by the international pet trade

AINFO - versão 5.0: manual on-line.

O AINFO é um sistema para automação de bibliotecas e recuperação de informação, desenvolvimento em padrão Windows, com arquitetura cliente/servidor baseada no sistema gerenciador de banco de dados relacional Firebird. Pemite o gerenciamento de informação técnico-científica, integrando bases de dados documentais, cadastrais e processos bibliográficos através do armazenamento, atualização, indexação e recuperação de informação de forma simples e rápida, utilizando não apenas recursos de um istema gerenciador de banco de dados, como controle de concorrência e manutenção de integridade das bases de dados, mas também oferecendo facilidades de recuperação de informação textual não disponíveis nesses sistemas.bitstream/CNPTIA/10207/1/doc40.pdfAcesso em: 29 maio 2008

Cerebral complexity preceded enlarged brain size and reduced olfactory bulbs in Old World monkeys

Analysis of the only complete early cercopithecoid (Old World monkey) endocast currently known, that of 15-million-year (Myr)-old Victoriapithecus, reveals an unexpectedly small endocranial volume (ECV) relative to body size and a large olfactory bulb volume relative to ECV, similar to extant lemurs and Oligocene anthropoids. However, the Victoriapithecus brain has principal and arcuate sulci of the frontal lobe not seen in the stem catarrhine Aegyptopithecus, as well as a distinctive cercopithecoid pattern of gyrification, indicating that cerebral complexity preceded encephalization in cercopithecoids. Since larger ECVs, expanded frontal lobes, and reduced olfactory bulbs are already present in the 17- to 18-Myr-old ape Proconsul these features evolved independently in hominoids (apes) and cercopithecoids and much earlier in the former. Moreover, the order of encephalization and brain reorganization was apparently different in hominoids and cercopithecoids, showing that brain size and cerebral organization evolve independently

Maternal and Perinatal Outcomes in Second Hemoglobin Measurement in Nonanemic Women at First Booking: Effect of Altitude of Residence in Peru

Objective. To determine changes in hemoglobin concentration at second measurements after a normal hemoglobin concentration was detected at first booking during pregnancy at low and at high altitudes. Methods. This is a secondary analysis of a large database obtained from the Perinatal Information System in Peru which includes 379,816 pregnant women and their babies from 43 maternity units in Peru. Results. Most women remained with normal hemoglobin values at second measurement (75.1%). However, 21.4% of women became anemic at the second measurement. In all, 2.8% resulted with moderate/severe anemia and 3.5% with erythrocytosis (Hb>14.5 g/dL). In all cases Hb was higher as altitude increased. Risk for moderate/severe anemia increased associated with higher gestational age at second measurement of hemoglobin, BMI <19.9 kg/m2, living without partner, <5 antenatal care visits, first parity, multiparity, and preeclampsia. Lower risk for moderate/severe anemia was observed with normal high Hb level at first booking living at moderate and high altitude, and high BMI. Conclusion. Prevalence of anemia increases as pregnancy progress, and that a normal value at first booking may not be considered sufficient as Hb values should be observed throughout pregnancy. BMI was a risk for anemia in a second measurement

Binding of Antitumor Ruthenium(III) Complexes to Plasma Proteins

Presently, there is large interest in analysing the interactions in vitro with plasma proteins of some novel antitumor ruthenium(III) complexes that are in preclinical or clinical phase. The joint application of separation and spectroscopic techniques provides valuable information on the nature and the properties of the resulting ruthenium/protein adducts. Recent work carried out in our laboratory points out that, under physiological conditions, some selected ruthenium(III) complexes bind plasma proteins tightly with a marked preference for surface imidazole groups. Representative examples of interactions of antitumor ruthenium(III) complexes with plasma proteins such as albumin and transferrin are given. Notably the antitumor ruthenium(III) complexes considered here bind proteins much tighter than DNA; it is proposed that protein binding of ruthenium(III) complexes will have a large impact on the biodistribution, the pharmacokinetics and the mechanism of action of these experimental drugs

A Similarity Measure for GPU Kernel Subgraph Matching

Accelerator architectures specialize in executing SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) in lockstep. Because the majority of CUDA applications are parallelized loops, control flow information can provide an in-depth characterization of a kernel. CUDAflow is a tool that statically separates CUDA binaries into basic block regions and dynamically measures instruction and basic block frequencies. CUDAflow captures this information in a control flow graph (CFG) and performs subgraph matching across various kernel's CFGs to gain insights to an application's resource requirements, based on the shape and traversal of the graph, instruction operations executed and registers allocated, among other information. The utility of CUDAflow is demonstrated with SHOC and Rodinia application case studies on a variety of GPU architectures, revealing novel thread divergence characteristics that facilitates end users, autotuners and compilers in generating high performing code

A new urban freight distribution scheme and an optimization methodology for reducing its overall cost

The paper refers to an innovative urban freight distribution scheme, aimed at reducing the externalities connected with the freight delivery process. Both packages destined to commercial activities and to end consumers (e-commerce) are taken into account. Each package is characterized by an address and dimensions. In the proposed transport system, freight is firstly delivered to the UDC on the border of urban areas through trucks or trains which perform the long distance transport. After, freight is reorganized and consolidated into load units, i.e. the FURBOT boxes, according to packages dimensions and to the addresses of receivers. Each box is addressed to a temporary unloading bay and it is delivered there by a FURBOT vehicle. The receivers are in charge of collecting their packages in the related unloading bays where they have been delivered. The paper concerns a methodology for optimizing this freight transport system's performances. The overall methodology receives in input the actual freight demand and the road network, and finds the transport system parameters (number of required FURBOT boxes, their temporary unloading bay, the FURBOT fleet dimension and the FURBOT vehicle routing) that minimize the system overall cost. The overall cost is a sum of the users' cost, which depends on the distance they have to walk for collecting their packages in the FURBOT box, and of the operator's cost, which depends on the number of required boxes, the total distance travelled by the FURBOT vehicles and the required number of FURBOT vehicles. The overall procedure has been applied to the case study of Barreiro old town, a suburb of Lisbon, Portugal

A Simple Braking Method for Six-phase Induction Motor Drives with Unidirectional Power Flow in the Base-speed Region

Induction motor drives supplied from diode front-end rectifiers are commonly used in industrial applications due to their low cost and reliability. However, the two-quadrant operation of such a topology makes the regenerative braking impossible. Braking resistors can be used to dissipate the braking power and provide enhanced braking capability, but additional hardware is then necessary. Alternatively, the braking power can be dissipated within the inverter/motor by control software reconfiguration. In this scenario, the additional degrees of freedom of multiphase drives can be used to increase the system losses without disturbing the flux and torque production. Experimental results confirm the possibility to enhance the braking capability of six-phase drives with only few changes in the control scheme

Signals of Unconventional E6_6 Models at e+e−e^+e^- Colliders

Generation dependent discrete symmetries often appear in models derived from superstring theories. In particular, in the framework of E$_6$ models the presence of such symmetries is required in order to allow for the radiative generation of naturally small neutrino masses. Recently it was shown that by imposing suitable generation dependent discrete symmetries, a class of models can be consistently constructed in which the three sets of known fermions in each generation do not have the same assignments with respect to the {\bf 27} representation of E$_6$. In this scenario, the different embedding in the gauge group of the three generations implies in particular that the known charged leptons couple in a non--universal way to the new neutral gauge bosons $(Z_\beta)$ present in these models. We exploit this fact to study the signature of this class of models at present and future $e^+e^-$ colliders. We show that some signals of deviation from lepton universality as well as some other discrepancies with the standard model predictions which have been observed at the TRISTAN collider in the production rate of $\mu$ and $\tau$, can be accounted for if the $Z_\beta$ mass is not much heavier than 300 GeV. We also study the discovery limits for lepton universality violation of this type at LEP-2 and at the 500 GeV $e^+e^-$ Next Linear Collider (NLC). We show that models predicting unconventional assignments for the leptons will give an unmistakable signature, when the $Z_\beta$ mass is as heavy as $\sim 800$ GeV (LEP-2) and $\sim 2$ TeV (NLC).Comment: Plain Tex, 20 pages. 4 PostScript figures (uses `epsf.tex'). Modified file-format. No changes in the tex